Monday Dec 22, 2014

With the release of Oracle Applications Cloud Release 9, the simplified UI continues to drive the Oracle user experience forward. Building on Release 7 and 8, Oracle ERP for Release 9 packs even more of a punch into the applications’ simplicity, mobility, and extensibility. Here’s how Oracle ERP Cloud further improves the Oracle user experience.

Simplicity for executives on the go

Users have everything they need to get started right away at their fingertips on a mobile device, so the days of intimidating data-entry screens, multiple monitors, and dozens of email chains are over.

Embedded social tools for collaboration

Social collaboration is built into the Oracle Applications Cloud platform, right inside every report. Collaboration is a cinch when you can upload, download, and export PDFs in Conversations and even annotate them without leaving the UI. Approvals, Notifications, and Social span the entire Oracle network, so busy users can stay connected wherever they are.

Social Panel: Created for Release 9, the brand-new Social Panel allows users to access conversations and walls to update information without having to leave the home page.

Seamless for Financials power users

The features of Oracle ERP Cloud are now only a touch away for those serious financials users. At a glance, check the general ledger close status, for example, including any supporting documentation, all in one streamlined app. Navigating multiple complex systems is a thing of the past because users can now visually navigate ledgers with ease.

Summary view: Not enough information? Just select the Close Monitor to drill down into the next level of detail.

Period Close visualization: Use the toolbar to modify the visualization or get a closer look. From this page, users can also initiate or respond to a social conversation specific to this period close.

An executive perspective

Oracle Senior Director David Haimes, ERP Cloud Product Development, and Vice President Jeremy Ashley, Oracle Applications User Experience, recently conducted a series of executive briefing events with customers and partners in London about what’s next for the ERP Cloud user experience. Here are their thoughts on those sessions and on Oracle ERP Cloud:

"The challenge with ERP has traditionally been, ‘How do users access, find, and understand typically large and complicated data? With our approach, we allow users to view very complicated things at a glance -- to understand what their next step is. Time is money with ERP. With our new product experience, we have specifically explored methods of putting complicated business information in a way that can be quickly and simply consumed. It guides, suggests, and directs the user to their next action." Jeremy Ashley

"The thing about Release 9 is it is a big feature-function release -- global features, industry features -- and that is what people expect from Oracle. Some of the things that people are getting most excited about are seeing the strides in user experience. Release 9 is a step on a journey. We are introducing some simplified UI for the most common use cases, interactive data visualizations -- people are really excited about this. They have never been able to do this before.

“Also the social capability with all the mobile apps which really revolutionizes the way people can do their work -- it’s very compelling from the perspective of existing customers and customers who are starting their upgrade to Release 9, who are getting excited about trying this out in their organization and using it to show their end users the benefits of being on the cloud and the continual innovations that Oracle will be delivering to them.

“It is getting users who would normally not use the system excited about using it. One of the nice things from the sessions in London was hearing, ‘This is great, because I am going to be able to go back and get my end users excited about these features.’” David Haimes

“Glance, Scan, Commit”

The Oracle HCM Cloud dashboard

Oracle’s Release 9 user experience unites even more seamlessly with the design philosophy driving Oracle Applications Cloud. This is the first example of a unified user experience with Taleo. In Hiring Activities, users can easily update the hiring process from a macro view -- at a glance. But if they need to, they can scan for the important pieces and commit to drill deeper.

Viewing actions to take in Requisitions: Use the drop-down in this innovative “smart card” view to reject, move forward, or add comments on a candidate from any level of commitment.

Timeline: Visualize data on candidates in different stages of the hiring process, from the first interview to the offer, and quickly scan for a glance at status and next actions.

Better Understanding: Infographics in Analytics

Simple, modern, well-designed analytics help executives and managers effectively evaluate their organizations with a speedy once-over. The graphics are large, smart, and colorful, making them great for presentations, and progress toward goals is easy to see.

Analytics: See performance ratings in one simple view, and eliminate digging through reports to understand how your organization is doing.

Headcount Budget view: Check your employee count quickly and easily, and if you need an extra pair of hands, you can jump directly into creating a requisition.

Maximum Engagement: Social and Competitions

Expanded social capabilities and competitions give employees across generations an extra push to engage in their work life. The Social Panel allows users to access Conversations and Walls to update information without having to leave the home page, and they can have as many Conversation threads as they desire while keeping them organized.

Social Panel: Post to your Wall or the Wall of a business object in which you are actively involved from anywhere in HCM.

Competitions uses the same glance-able view found throughout Release 9, allows actions at multiple levels of commitment, and gives users more information on request.

Competitions: Perform the most common competition-related tasks from this level, or drill deeper to check rankings or add a score -- number of steps taken for a wellness competition, for example.

Competitions Leader Board: This design approach makes reaching goals as a team fun and engaging.

rk-life engagement encouraged by Social and Competitions complement one another in the simplified UI.

What People Are Saying

“Oracle has also simplified the alphabet soup of its many business-intelligence tools and embedded them in applications, created a single mobile-user experience and introduced many on-premise integration toolkits and pre-packaged integrations.” Bill Kutik, Human Resource Executive Online

“ ... In Release 9 of Oracle HCM Cloud, much of the focus is on usability. The company has worked to unify the user experience of HCM Cloud applications with those of Taleo Recruiting and Taleo Talent Management so that they function as a consistent suite of applications. One aspect where this has improved the applications is the new “smart cards” for the recruiting application, which organize candidate information in a readable graphic format. Leone espoused the larger goal of providing the same user experience in all the enterprise cloud HCM applications.” Stephan Millard, Ventana Research

“ ... Release 9 of HCM Cloud enhances functionality in the Oracle Mobile application. It aligns several parts of mobile recruiting including the hiring work list and interview evaluation screens as well as parts of performance management to look and work similarly to the user interface for the Web-based version of the application. Future versions will continue the effort to harmonize the mobile and Web user interfaces for talent management. ... In addition, our benchmark research on human capital analytics shows that a solid majority (65%) of organizations are using mobile applications for talent management today or plan to do so over the next year.” Stephan Millard, Ventana Research

Saturday Dec 13, 2014

If you missed meeting up with the Oracle Applications User Experience (OAUX) team at Oracle OpenWorld 2014 this year, you still have a chance to connect with us. The next stop on our regional update tour is Santa Fe, Mexico, just outside of Mexico City. Our first stop during the first week of December 2014 was London.

The goal for the visit is to update Oracle Applications Cloud partners, as well as a few select customers, on the Oracle Applications Cloud strategy and roadmap. Oracle is continuing to invest in moving the user experience forward, and by spending a couple of hours with us at this event, you will find out what to start thinking about for your own organization down the road.

What: Oracle is hosting a series of executive briefing events, each two hours long, for director-level and above Oracle partners and Oracle customers located in Latin America. These events near Mexico City will focus on the Oracle Applications Cloud User Experience strategy for HCM Cloud, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, ERP Cloud, extensibility, and emerging technologies (wearables and beacons).

Oracle employees
Kristin Desmond, from left, and Killian Evers talk about the next
generation of the Oracle Sales Cloud user experience being shown during
the OAUX Exchange, held during Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco in
September.

The briefings are for Oracle partners, ideally director level and above, who are located in Mexico City or Latin America generally, for Oracle’s HCM Cloud, Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, and ERP Cloud.

Select Oracle Applications Cloud customers, ideally director level and above, who are located in Mexico City or Latin America generally, are also invited to attend briefings for Oracle’s HCM Cloud, Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, and ERP Cloud.

Why: Our team would like to share strategy and roadmap on Oracle's ongoing investment in its cloud user experiences for applications, as well as to collect feedback and perspectives from our partners and customers.

Agenda: Jeremy Ashley, VP of the Oracle Applications User Experience team, will listen and respond to the issues that are top of mind for attendees around user experience, as well as share the big-picture trends Oracle is paying attention to, and where Oracle is doing research and development from an enterprise software perspective.

Attendees will also have an opportunity to engage with the OAUX team, talk to the experts, and try for themselves the forward-looking user experiences for Oracle Sales Cloud, Oracle Service Cloud, Oracle HCM Cloud, and Oracle ERP Cloud. It’s a great way for us to get direct feedback about our investment approach.

Attendees will also have the chance to take a deeper dive into the user experience plans for Oracle Applications Cloud Extensibility and Paas4SaaS.

Finally, we will be bringing along representatives from our Emerging Technologies team to demonstrate and discuss what we think about new technologies such as wearables and beacons for the enterprise space.

Saturday Sep 27, 2014

For the Oracle Applications User Experience team, Oracle OpenWorld 2014 got off to an early start with an invitation-only Applications Cloud UX Strategy & Roadmap Day the week before OpenWorld kicked off.

We gave partners, customers, and Oracle sales reps a first look at the Oracle Applications User Experience (OAUX) just ahead. About 40 participants had the chance to show, see, hear about, and discuss Oracle R&D efforts behind our upcoming cloud user experiences, including near-production design work and ongoing plans, at Oracle headquarters on Wednesday, Sept. 24.

The audience included many dedicated OAUX Speakers, Oracle ACE Directors, strategic partners, and key Oracle sales reps and solution consultants who are part of the OAUX Sales Ambassador (SAMBA) program. Several of the participants had been trained already on the Oracle user experience and often speak at user group conferences or write about Oracle frequently.

Photos by Rob Hernandez, Oracle Applications User Experience

Jeremy Ashley (@jrwashley), vice president of the Oracle Applications User Experience, above, set the stage early for a day of sharing and outreach. As he gave an overview of the Oracle user experience strategy, he reminded the audience that a simplified user experience was first launched a year ago for the Applications Cloud at Oracle OpenWorld 2013. “We’re not just talking about what we’ve got anymore, we’re actually showing it,” he said. “When we talk about the roadmap, we have examples of products already released to show you what we mean. This is part of a cultural shift for Oracle – we’re responding more quickly to the market and our users' needs than ever before.”

He added that what OpenWorld attendees see this year won’t be conceptual. “What you’ll see at OpenWorld is product or will be released soon,” he said. “We’re proud of what we have, and we’re showing it.”

Questions from the audience centered on how all of Oracle’s applications products, such as HCM Cloud, Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, ERP Cloud, E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft, are integrating the simplified UI into current releases. The answer is that many updates have been released throughout the past year, and examples of user experience features are visible throughout the application suites.

But the user experience team always wants to go beyond “when can we get this?”. An example that struck a chord with the audience repeatedly throughout the day was geo-fencing – concepts around built-in security that is tied to wi-fi access and location. Is anyone else talking about this?, audience members asked. And then they added what we always love to hear: “This is cool.”

There were several breakout sessions throughout the day that highlighted new user experiences in the Oracle HCM Cloud, Oracle Sales Cloud, Oracle ERP Cloud, PaaS for Saas and extensibility, and the path to product for many user experience concepts. Visit the Usable Apps Events page to see where you can catch bits of these presentations at OpenWorld this year, or watch our channels (links are available on the Usable Apps website) for new content on the same topics. You can also check back with VoX on these topics – we’ll get something posted as soon as these user experience features are released.

The day ended with a showdown, followed by more cool demos (because that’s what we do best) provided by our own AppsLab (@theappslab), George Hackman, and Laurie Pattison. Our audience was game, and several stepped up to the front of the class to talk about what they had learned and why they had a passion for user experience.

Gustavo Gonzalez (@ggonza4itc), from left, Oracle employee Ultan O’Broin (@usableapps), Sten Vesterli (@techthatfits), Floyd Teter (@fteter), Lonneke Dikmans (@lonnekedikmans), Debra Lilley (@debralilley), and Oracle employee Misha Vaughan (@mishavaughan) pose for a picture of the winners’ circle after a speaker showdown at the end of the OAUX Day. Ultan and Misha judged the competition. All were declared winners and received fabulous wearables hand-picked by the OAUX team. Floyd won the grand prize for including the OAUX design philosophy of “glance, scan, commit” in his presentation.

But in the end, all of the speakers were winners in our book, and everyone took something fun home.

Where can you find us next?

The OAUX team will be on the road in FY 15 (Oracle-speak for June 1, 2014 to May 31, 2015), visiting EMEA, LAD, and APAC. We will have a specific focus on Oracle Applications Cloud partners, and a few of their key customers as follows:

Thursday Dec 29, 2011

You’ve
heard it from the Oracle Applications User Experience team before – one key way
Oracle is continuing the commitment to applications customers is through user
experience enhancements.

At
OpenWorld 2011, in October in San Francisco, we got to hear it straight from
the executives. The Group Vice President for PeopleSoft, Paco Aubrejuan, and the
Senior Director of PeopleSoft Development, Jeff Robbins, spoke directly to both
the applications improvements as well as the user experience enhancements in
the tools.

Read more
about how you can create a cleaner, more modern look with new user experience
features available in PeopleSoft and PeopleTools. This screenshot shows the
type of website-centric approach that is possible with today’s PeopleSoft.

This is a
smart strategy. Improvements in the application translate into immediate value
for a customer. But what happens when that same customer wants to extend the
experience, to customize, or to add new components? With a tool set that is
just as focused on user experience, Oracle delivers a complete experience to
customers.

To read
more about what is newly available in PeopleSoft, visit Usable
Apps.